good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. this isn't like covering politics anymore. it is more like doing guard duty in a jungle. there are strange noises but dawn brings the real danger when the large animals come out to feed. donald trump likes the get up early and roar. since getting up saturday morning, he's roared about president obama wiretapping him during the campaign, though no one around him from his press secretary to the head of the house intelligence committee will confirm it ever happened. he, trump, tweeted, now this is the president of the united states. some vindictive crap about arnold schwarzenegger losing his job on the apresent sxis then still on dawn patrol, he tweeted about president obama releasing 122 terrorists frommer guantanamo bay who then rejoined the cause. it turns out nine out of ten were released before obama ever came to the white house. fact. what is happening is that this has gotten so hay wire is that

his peel, his very spokesman in the white house and his republicans will no longer play ditto heads. they won't say this believe the guy. sean spicer refuses to lip sync what president trump said aut retapping. now it is fast his boss were speaking english as a second language. fixing the math. here's how sean spicer explained the tweet on guantanamo when asked about it today. >> obviously the president meant in totality the number released on the battlefield. from gitmo. >> nice try, the only problem, the president specifically said in his tweet that they were released by the obama administration. that's a fact. check it. meanwhile spicer continued to deflect about the weekend tweet fest in which he accused of the

tapping before the election. a radio host named mark levin over and over, repeatedly asked spicer for hard evidence. >> we put our statement on sunday saying that we would have no further comment and we were asking the house and the senate intelligence committee to look into this concern and report back. >> can't he just ask him? >> no. the president has not. >> will the president withdraw the accusation? does he have i -- >> why would he withdraw it until it is adjudicated? >> have you seen any evidence yourself? >> as far as me, no. i am not in a position that would be regularly part of my daily duties. >> is the white house position that the president can make declarative statements about the former president decommitting a crime and then they should look into that and basically prove it? >> it is not a question of prove it. they have the resources and the clearances and the staff to

fully and comprehensively investigate it. >> but president trump's statement shouldn't be taken at face value. >> why would the president the want congress to investigate information he already has of until there's a separation here. >> you're talking about resources and time. why waste it? >> it is a question of appropriateness. >> many republicans avoided the assertion, they requested for evidence of the serious charge. >> i think that the president of the united states stated that president obama wiretapped. he should come forward to the information that led him to that conclusion. it is a very serious charge against previous president of the united states. >> i'm joined now, what do you

think of him saying the former president illegally wiretapped him. >> thanks for having me back. this president is no longer credible is that there's no one that he is willing to spare in defaming to distract us from the uncomfortable questions around russia. >> what do you think? do you think he just made it up? >> there is no evidence of it. if there was any sort of wiretapping, it is because the fbi ask the department of justice got a federal judge to sign off on it which means necessary real trouble. >> but none of that happened. you're on the intelligence committee. that you know none of that happened. >> there is no evidence out there. this president has crossed all lines. he has attacked judiciary. he is attacking the peaceful transfer of power. and president obama who was so gracious on him and pretty measured. more measured than a lot of us would have been. he's attack the independence of our law enforcement. so there is no line he would cross to make sure he distracts

us from these questions around russia. >> trump is president of the united states. i have a hard time calling him president trump right now. when he gets up at dawn and starts tweeting, that doesn't seem like an official statement from a president. it strikes me as the guwho used to say that obama was an illegal immigrant. like as he blogger, not the president. >> what do you think when he makes these claims srgs he president when he is doing is this? or is this some weird extracurricular at dawn he practices? >> he is the armchair uncle after thanksgiving dinner who is just letting his unfounded opinions fly. and we need a president who is focused right now. and i always step back. he is entitled to his opinion but if it is making us less safe or giving americans less opportunity, that's when americans need speak up. >> when is the committee going to say this is nonsense in what is the wait? all you have to do as a

committee. i know how it works call the fbi director to the stand tomorrow morning. put hill under oath and say was there any evidence while you've been director months and years ago, any evidence or any attempt to bug donald trump. get it over with. why are we waiting months of this nonsense? >> it's not hard. i was encouraged the fbi director comey was trying to have the department of justice clear this reckless statement by the president. we should do that this week. we shouldn't have to let the american people be confused about what really happened here because the president is so reckless with his tweets. >> at noon, as a republican he is saying, we haven't heard anything yet so far about it. we're going to keep our eyes open and our ears open and maybe something will come across our desk. he is saying there is nothing to it but he won't blow the whistle on saying, let's stop this. >> thanks for coming.

on president trump's surrogates have struggled to try to cover for the boss's weird statements on wiretapping. listen closely to how they distanced themselves. >> look interesting president firmly believes that the obama administration play tapped into the phones at trump tower of. >> is his information, that president obama tapped his phone based solely on something he read in the media? >> i haven't had the chance to have the conversation directly with the president. he is at a much higher classification than i am. he may have access to documents that i don't know about. >> how does he know that his phone is actually tapped? >> let me answer that. he is the president of the united states. he has information and intelligence that the rest of us do not. that's the way it should be for presidents. >> do you believe president obama? >> i get that's a key question. my job is to represent the president and what he wants.

he's made very clear what his goal is. i am not here to speak for myselfism here to speak for the president of the united states and the government. >> he sounds like a public defend we are an obviously guilty defendant and he won't say anything. he will say, i'll defend this charact character. >> i want to go to robert on this. you know trump pretty well. why is he getting up at six:00 in the morning and spouting this nonsense in he's president. >> he's the president and he's always gotten up early. he is up at 4:00, 5:00 in the morning. he reads the news, the printout of arrests that sit on his desk and he goes through them page by page. >> why does he do it? >> he doesn't use a computer. >> you're missing my main point why. does he get up on a saturday

morning the trash his predecessor, then do it again, saturday, then tuesday. first, he said as he felon because he wire attempted him. in the past he said he was worthy of deportation because he snuck into the country illegally. then he said he let the guys at guantanamo go. 93% were released froef obama becoming president. it was an unfair charge in both cases. why is he attack the former president at dawn? >> a fair question. he truly thinks day to day about president obama and he compares himself to how much president obama was able to accomplish in his first few months in office. why he is somewhat haunted, smas put it, by president obama's first materiaterm, i'm not sure. i'm not a psychologist. but he does talk about what he could do with a democratic congress in 2009. >> well, he was a rational man and he is a gentleman. how is that for a rational

argument? >> what do you make of this? >> i don't know. as somebody who spent a year saying, oh, gee, isn't it crazy that he's tweeting this or saying that. when you start to see that there's a pattern to something. not just in terms. news cycle. we're talking about russia and things he doesn't want us to talk about but also the time of the day. at dawn. setting the news cycle in the morning. there is intentionality. going after president obama, that's personal too. >> if it comes out, as it really is coming out already. >> this tweet wasn't strategic. >> he would be seen as being a blow hard who is sending out nonsense at dawn. what about blaming the guantanamo recidivists, when in fact he had a very small role in it. >> i think it was just popping off. going on the morning shows and saying what can i put out this morning to get people like us talking about something like

gitmo instead of talking about rod rosenstein who could be the deputy ag is having his confirmation hearings today. >> let me get back to robert one of the stories that's out is a haywire situation. we saw pictures through windows of steve banning being eruptive last week. we're hearing about reince priebus is trying to be the hall monitor but isn't succeeding. he is being blamed. trump comes out and says this is all fake news. >> there is some disruption inside the white house. and it is important to know that bannon and priebus were not with the president in florida on saturday morning with he started this cascade of tweets. he was in he is end alone, he was a president he alone at mar-a-lago. reading breitbart. and bannon has this world view that trump has in many ways adopted. but bannon, he is a comfort

dante of president but it is always trump himself making decisions, reacting. this idea of bannon or priebus being the influence, it never bears out. it is trump alone re. styles taking their council but really running on his gut instincts. >> up next, we hear from one of trump's closest friends the president is not a happy camper these days. that friend is with us tonight. imagine if the things you bought every day earned you miles to get to the places you really want to go. with the united mileageplus explorer card, you'll get a free checked bag, 2 united club passes... priority boarding... and 50,000 bonus miles. everything you need for an unforgettable vacation. the united mileageplus explorer card. imagine where it will take you. ...you need to eat this special.

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welcome back. it was saturday morning with president trump fired off tweets accusing president obama of wiretapping his phones during the 2016 campaign. a charge he made without evidence and won his own fbi director has said to ignore. his own filibuster director said ignore this. but a long time friend of president trump's spent time with the president shortly after the tweets and again later saturday night. he wrote on sunday, i spoke with the president twice yesterday about the wiretap story. i haven't seen him this ticked off in a long time. when i mentioned obama's denials about the white house, he said well this will be veinvestigate. it will come out. christopher, thank you for joining us. if you have any, about trying to examine the president would need to get up and tweet about this, i wonder.

>> well, breaking news, donald trump likes to tweet what he thinks and feels and what's going on in his mind. and he's been doing it a long time so there's no surprise here. a lot of people were caught very much off guard by this. but my conversations with h saturday, he was extremely confident about the information. he was angry. this did not seem like something he was sort of bantering about. like something about ted cruz' father or something like that. this was very serious. >> he spent any number of years talking that about the illegal immigrants. so don't say they're casual remarks. they were serious charges. he was on the birther patrol for years. >> well, let's make it clear, i'll not here to represent the president. nor the white house. i'm just speaking as an individual who is friends with the president but also runs a media agency. i took it seriously. i think we should take the allegations seriously.

i also think the president should produce some evidence at some point that supports the allegation. but let's remember, for all the talk about this, fbi director has yet to make any official statement. and all of the denials, 95% of these denials, nobody is deny that had the trump campaign was surveiled. what they are denying is that president obama ordered the surveillance. that's a big difference. and i think a very important difference. if that campaign was surveiled, and a lot of those campaign that's the that i've spoken to all believe they were surveiled at one point or another, that's a serious matter. >> who were the people who said that? >> i've talked to any number of people. >> give me a name or two. >> i don't give up my sources and i'm sure you don't either. >> they aren't sources. they're people who said they were surveiled. they're people in the campaign who charged the obama administration. >> let's start with the president of the united states. he says he was surveiled. he said it was mccarthyism.

he said he would like it investigated. why won't the fbi director make an official statement about it? do you have any idea? >> look, i wish he would. he certainly did make one about hillary clinton being

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>> good evening, chris, thank you my friend. >> you bet. happy tuesday. big, big, big busy news day today. one of those days when it pays to not zone out. sort of pays to pay attention. one of the things we'll talk about in tonight's show is the rollout today of the republican plan to get rid of the affordable care act. fairly disastrous rollout, i would say today. we knew democrats would hate it but who knew republicans could craft a plan that would give so many different kinds of republicans so many different reasons to hate it. if you are worried about losing your health insurance, if you are worried about 20 million of your fellow americans losing their health insurance, today was very scary in terms of what republicans said they want to do